Embracing the inescapable joys of sound.

Gnaw Their Tongues – L’arrive De La Terne Mort Triomphante – Review

There aren’t many bands on the planet that will push the boundaries of the listening threshold in the way that Gnaw Their Tongues do. Describing this as an apocalyptic nightmare coming true probably doesn’t quite cut it.

Unlike any nightmare, L’arrivée De La Terne Mort Triomphante feels eternal, somehow embodying a static purgatory that almost escapes the conventional realms of existence – with no means of return.

The human mind can only imagine what kind of a world this music builds and that’s the beautiful thing about this album. If there were a hundred people lying in the dark listening to this record every one of them would take a different experience from it when pictures flash across the mind in poignant display.

It won’t be the cheeriest of listens. Les Anges Frémissent Devant la Mort has a continual drone of church organ backed by the trembling of electronic noise and wavering eerie violin. For me the atmosphere is an incarnation of bleak and abominable misery, perpetually spinning as a swirling entity, unaware of its own repugnant nature.

In Le Chant De La Mort it feels as if a more traditional song structure is trying to break out of the enveloping mirage of symphonic interference, desperately attempting to surface amid the mire of nothingness. But it can’t – and neither can the agitated beastly screams that have the disturbing rage of a tortured wild animal struggling to writhe free from its cage.

To really get this album, you’ve got to find some time alone and allow it to pierce down to the bare bone in order get your own satisfaction from it. You may find yourself enlightened, corrupted or confused.